NORTH AMERICA ► The year’s biggest story was undoubtedly the launch of state-sanctioned online gambling in America. My prediction last December that New Jersey wouldn’t be taking its first online wagers until 2014 was off by a little over a month, but I underestimated Garden State officials’ desire to fling poo at their Nevada counterparts, who, along with their federal champion Harry Reid, had long insisted that Nevada was the only US regulatory body capable of overseeing an online gambling market. New Jersey can now point to its successful management of virtually every type of online gambling bar sports betting, while not even Bwin.party now believes launching a poker-only product serving Nevada’s 2.5m residents is worth the effort.

► I might have missed the Jersey timeline, but 2013 did confirm my longstanding prediction that online gambling’s US political acceptance would be at the state level. There were a couple new federal legislative efforts in the House of Representatives this year – even lobbyists have to show receipts, after all – but they reminded me of a football team coming out of the locker room ready to play the THIRD half. Sorry, guys, but this contest is over and it wasn’t even close.

► Sticking with New Jersey, I misjudged the US federal court system’s willingness to overlook the blatant inequality behind Nevada’s monopoly of single-game sports betting. Blind fools to a man, the federal judges not named Thomas Vanaskieupheld the constitutionality of the federal PASPA restrictions, somehow arriving at the conclusion that prohibiting someone from exhaling is different from ordering them to hold their breath. Then again, the constitution was written by a bunch of slaveholders who declared all men were created equal, and I believe the right to hypocrisy was enshrined in the third amendment or something.

► Social gaming’s ability to convert players into real-money gamblers remained a dubious prospect, as demonstrated by Zynga’s DOA real-money efforts in the UK. But the encouraging revenue figures posted by social casino companies like IGT’s DoubleDown Casino demonstrated that selling virtual credits might be a perfectly profitable end game in itself.

► Virtual currencies finally grew big enough for US regulators to take notice, leading to the takedowns of the Liberty Reserve and Silk Road sites. Then the Treasury Department’s FINCEN watchdogs justified their crackdown on a US subsidiary of the Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange by saying the company had failed to register as a money services business, while US banks responded by cutting ties with US businesses that transacted in Bitcoin, regardless of whether or not these firms had followed FINCEN’s guidance. This Kafkaesque approach bodes well for my own 2014 alternative currency project, Kafcoin, which will require all banks to register with people who AREN’T their customers.

► Consolidation was the name of the game in the US land-based gaming supplier industry, with Bally Technologies fusing with SHFL Entertainment and Scientific Games teaming with WMS Industries. I guess now that the ranks of senior citizens pushing their buttons are thinning, slot machines must be huddling together for warmth.

► What is there left to say about Las Vegas Sands’ Sheldon Adelson except he would have made a great old school Bond villain? All that’s left is for Dr. No No No to threaten to destroy the Isle of Man with the death ray hidden in his wheelchair.

EUROPE ► All UK-facing companies are staring down the barrel of the new 15% point-of-consumption tax (POCT) late in 2014, but some are better positioned than others to take the blow. Like Bet365, which never followed the herd in relocating its online sportsbook to Gibraltar. Far from the prying eyes of the public markets, privately held Bet365 doesn’t share its financial numbers all that often, but when they do, they’re the envy of the industry.

This isn’t what Topping (left) meant when he told Sagi (right) to get a grip

► Betfair’s rebound likely gave courage to Bwin.party and Ladbrokes, both of which experienced similar swoons this year, except neither has yet hit bottom. Simply put, Ladbrokes are a bloody mess. Online profits are less than a quarter of what they were when CEO Richard Glynn took over three years ago and the company issues profit warnings as often as I order fresh rounds of drinks. It remains to be seen whether Glynn gets the boot before (a) Lads’ overdue Playtech-powered online platform goes live or (b) that waitress returns with my Hendricks & Tonic.

► Companies serving the newly regulated markets in Italy and Spain found out what those serving the tax-happy French marketlearned a couple years back. One or two of you is going to make money, while everyone else pays through the nose to get reamed up the ass. If there’s any positive here, it’s been to convince other Euro-zone countries that attempting to repay their national debt solely via online gambling taxes isn’t sound fiscal planning.

► Spring brought a potential glimpse of the future on Hainan, where a ‘cashless’ casino quietly opened, only to quickly close its doors once its owner got a little too chatty with a Reuters reporter. In typically inscrutable fashion, it was unclear if China’s authorities had greenlit a pilot project to see what would happen if Macau had some Chinese competition or whether the Hainan joint had gone rogue. The former option seemed far more likely after the cashless wonders quietly reopened a few months later and their owners’ vital organs have yet to be harvested for sale to rich foreigners.

► Singapore’s casinos had a so-so year in terms of gaming revenue, while the government made noises about banning online gambling, and local sports lottery operator Singapore Pools suggested it would fill the void with its own online site. Convenient, that.

Las Vegas Sands paid the DOJ $47.4m while admitting it probably shouldn’t have helped a suspected methamphetamine kingpin transfer $85m from Mexico to Las Vegas in drips and drabs via mom-and-pop currency exchange kiosks. World Series of Poker 2010 main event champ Jonathan Duhamel‘s conniving ex-girlfriend was sentenced to 42 months in prison. Former Bodogers Patrik Selin and Robert Gustafssonlaunched a Swedish mafia branch office in Manila and are presently subject to an ongoing avalanche of criminal charges (this one I really missed). And finally, Auburn upset top-ranked Alabama in one of the most criminally negligent displays of special teams coverage I’ve ever seen.

► Poker sites’ continued their long overdue shift away from catering solely to the needs of high-raking grinders, further validating the strategy mapped out years ago by the Bodog recreational player model. Even the once-mighty PartyPoker took passive-aggressive steps to discourage grinders from preying on their fishier players by shrinking the typeface to the point where any grinder lacking a magnifying glass had little choice but to stick to a two-table maximum.

► A sequel to the movie Rounders was officially announced with the original writers on board. This caused much rejoicing among poker players, which proves just how few people actually saw Runner, Runner. From what we’re told, Rounders 2 will be set in Las Vegas and Paris, and the plot involves the protagonists attempting to play online in Nevada but the lack of liquidity means they can’t get a game going, so they switch to Paris, where Matt Damon wins the main event at the ISPT Stade de France only to learn that a random member of the Partouche clan has reneged on the guarantee, so Edward Norton beats him senseless with a particularly durable baguette. I smell Oscar!

► How does one recap the year Lock Poker had? People thought we were being unnecessarily cruel when this site began warning players and the rest of the industry three years ago that the individuals behind Lock weren’t to be trusted. Do we take satisfaction at being prescient? Far from it, considering the sheer number of Lock’s victims and the extent of their woes. But hopefully the debacle will open eyes to the fact that we don’t make a point of shitting on people without damn good reason.

► And with that, happy holidays, everyone. Drink your asses off, stuff your faces silly and pick your mistletoe moments wisely. We’ll see you next week with my predictions for the year ahead.

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